DONE IN GDOCS

The space felt too kitschy, too staged, too clean.

Insincere.

A sneer fell across his features as he looked over aborted Etsy projects and cardboard DIY stunts. Hopeite -- Abbott Niles -- loaded her home with knickknacks and minutiae that spoke nothing of the person living in it. Perhaps she made the lot herself, perhaps she didn't. Faustite lived long enough around opulent second-faces to recognize their ilk. This was a space kept to entertain. A kitchen programmed to neatness and clever display. The home looked too human in its aversion to little touches of humanity. A half-drunk glass, a discarded napkin that never made its way to the trash, a cutting board still cluttered with last night's dinner scraps. None of these were present. The reality of it caught him in the throat.

Faustite swallowed down his homesickness as he cracked open her fridge. Peering eyes found a meticulous diet -- legumes and arugula and swiss red chard in the transparent crisper drawer, filets of responsibly-farmed, fresh-caught pacific salmon sitting on the bottom shelf; an assortment of imported cheeses still wrapped in their wax, carrots and broccoli and cauliflower each fresh and waiting, bell peppers of colorful, crisp hues. He spotted fresh-picked berries sitting in a colander. Faustite claimed the salmon.

He shut the door with his hip and tossed the still-wrapped filets onto Hopeite's too-showy granite countertop. Absconding with a chef's knife and stabbed through the shrink wrap easily. And once he found the roll-out cutting board, he washed and laid the slick strips of meat. She'd be home soon, by her posted schedule. He checked the route between here and there by the Maps app on his phone, and it still sat open on the counter.

Faustite pulled the vegetables thereafter, and a crunch-click of a lock drew his attention. So he would see her soon, this Abbot Niles. This Hopeite. Would she have a friend in tow? He waited, silent for the moment, and leaned against the counter in anticipation.

Abbot’s day had gone about as well as the day before that had gone and the day before that had gone. There wasn’t much else to say. Since she had taken possession of the bright young thing that had deemed her worthy of trust, the every day seemed… bothersome. She could be spending her time doing more worthwhile things like spending quality time with her pet. No doubt she would be missing her by now… and hungry to boot. Abbot had just stocked up on groceries, and she suspected that Harmonia’s diet wouldn’t be too far off from her own. That being said… junk food would offer less nutrition and make her slower in the long run. It had been a tough call, to provide lovingly with real nutrition or offer yet another hollow offering of pseudo food. But in the end, Abbot had swung by the local burger joint and picked up the fattiest most disgusting thing that she could find on the menu. Something to clog Harmonia’s circuits and slow her down. Fill her up but never provide sustenance.

The key slipped into her lock and flipped the tumblers same as it always did. Abbot kicked off her shoes in the entryway, same as she always did. The stairs creaked beneath her and her footstep whispered on the hardwood floors just like they always did.

Mundane.

It was then that something reached her nostrils, causing her lungs to recoil painfully. Smoke… had she left a cigarette lit this morning? No, certainly not. She wasn’t that careless and besides, the smoke in the air lacked the taste of nicotine. She followed the scent around the corner where she saw the flicker of Amanda’s hind legs fleeing into the bedroom and away from whatever the source of the smoke was.

Some guard dog, she grumbled within herself

But at least she was safe.

That still left, however, the mystery of the source of the smoke. Had she left something on? Each step hastened the next and she was just about running when she came to the kitchen.

“Well, I’d say that I don’t believe the unmitigated gall but… well… that seems to be the calling card of our kind, doesn’t it? Need a hand?” Abbot didn’t wait for instructions. She pulled from the drawer next to Faustite a roll of parchment paper and gathered in her arms onions, carrots, and zucchini.

“How does Salmon En Papillote sound?”

Faustite was both unsurprised and unimpressed at Abbott's dog; the creature rocketed out of the room upon sight of him. Perhaps youma commanded a greater respect out of animals than out of people. That explains much, doesn't it.

He turned at Abbott's voice, however, and her consternation at the scene. Regarding her with a lidded stare, he spoke around the knife still held. "It's your dinner, lieutenant. Your choice." And your funeral if you stay so obstinate. Faustite tucked into the corner of the kitchen where counter space left him room for the pipes, and kept his gaze trained on Abbott's movements. She mobilized with purpose, with vegetables in arms and with enough gusto to confirm that she understood the gravity of their situation.

Or the sight of a half-youma holding a knife in her living space was enough to move her.

"I'm concerned about you, Abbott Niles." Faustite flipped the hold of the knife by the handle and drove it into a nearby cutting board. It thocked obediently. "You commit serious crimes against the Negaverse by attacking your superiors and cavorting with senshi. Someone might catch word of it. And then what would happen to you? Or your business?" He looked to the far corner of the room, where furred feet once ran. "Or your dog?"

Hands steepled together before his thin waist. He watched her move with a certainty. What point was there in pursuing purification? Or allying with the enemy? The Negaverse owned the rest of the world, while senshi owned dead planets. Dead histories. Did Abbott lust after these archaeological travesties? Or was her life so purposeless and dull that purification appeared the only viable route? The kitschy apartment, the dog, the surfeit of knickknacks indicated otherwise. This wasn't an unhappy home. No indication of a roommate or a significant other. Perhaps she just lived an empty life.

But purification wouldn't fill emptiness. What, then? Why try?

"I need you to explain yourself. You have until the fire alarm goes off."

Abbot glanced at Faustite with disinterest as he placed his knife back into the block and made a mental note to sanitize it when he was gone. She had no way of knowing if he’d cut the salmon, after all and she wasn’t overly keen on the idea of salmonella poisoning by her own food. From the drawer by her own hip, Abbot drew a small, cleverly sharp little paring knife and began deftly slicing thin strips of vegetable as Faustite spoke, half listening and half wishing that he would just get on with it and tell her what he wanted. She had never had much use for pretense and this captain seemed to have it in spades. It lingered in his stance, the way he pressed pitch black fingertips together, wickedly arching the digits in a mockery of confidence.

Confident men didn’t brandish that they were confident.

They showed it in action.

And Faustite had little enough of that to impress Hopeite with. Words and gestures were hollow in the end, though Abbot did not miss how carefully Faustite chose his. He was concerned about her. Not for her. He made careful reference to the negaverse as a whole, making sure that she knew that she was risking drawing the attention of a whole organization and not a powerful few. He referenced his rank in respect to hers. And then, Abbot noticed with a grin, the use of the ominous “them”. Someone will be watching. Someone will take action. It was the threat of some faceless, nameless goons of some shadow government far above them both.

Too obvious.

Faustite had shown his gambit far before Abbot had expected him too. He was just as alone in the as she was. Why else would he feel the need to impose himself on her territory if not to overcompensate for his lack of actual authority. Benitoite would have met her on the battlefield like a true general. Even Arseno, impulsive and weak though he was, at least had enough faith in himself not to go out of his way for an underling like her. She sprinkled the julienned strips of aromatics over the soft pink flesh of the salmon and wrapped the whole tiny package in parchment paper. She set the single paper packet aside as she leaned over the stovetop to reach the control panel of her oven.

“Pity,” she muttered as she punched in the preheating directions, “that you take the word of a senshi and a child over anything else.” The oven cried it’s understanding of her commands as Abbot busied herself cleaning the cutting board in water that created billowed of steam as it streamed over the wood and her hands. She also drew the knife that Faustite had been toying with and cleansed it in scalding water and soap before setting it to the side to be wiped down with a clean white towel.

“I have a plan for sweet little Harmonia, and that plan necessitated my looking beat to hell. Unfortunately you can’t fake that kind of injury, so I had to suck it up and pick fights. If it’s any consolation I did so with everyone I met, order and chaos alike.” But something in Abbot told her that the “serious crimes” that he was talking about didn’t pertain to attacking him. Especially a Lieutenant attacking a half-youma captain… hardly a punishable offense especially given her motive. A slap on the wrist at most, she surmised.

“That’s the problem with kids, I’m afraid,” Abbot sighed, returning to her fridge to grab armloads of leafy greens and deep, colorful vegetables. “Always concerned with the what. Never the why. Never stop to question, always taking things at face value. You know I blame facebook news.” She flashed a grin up at Faustite as she diced her kale into bite sized shards.

Faustite's gaze roved to the window while she spoke, while she busied hands with fish and pungent herb. He could smell it over the copper and salt that whisked invariably toward the smoke detector. He held his breath as long as possible, expectant of some modicum of reasoning.

He wondered, then, where he went wrong. In serving under Schörl, he grew accustomed to backhanded compliments, microaggressions, callouts to his inadequacy. But a general doling out a soured opinion matched not to a lieutenant similarly talking down to him. Captaincy supposedly bestowed rank and responsibility, though he caught himself in a frontlines management position. By his father's description, he was blamed for the shortcomings of the lieutenants by the generals, and blamed for shoddy management by the lieutenants. Here was no different.

Here was Hopeite, Abbott Niles, not caring one whit for his presence. For his threats. For his veiled indicator of Schörl, one of the more feared generals in their ranks.

Everyone coveted their breaking point, hid it away under rocks and detritus and sand. They left their sore spots looking benign, unattractive, seldom worth notice. Was Hopeite reacting as one under these conditions, or had he simply missed his mark? As he watched hummingbirds gather around a wall-mounted feeder outdoors, as he watched them suck up brilliant red liquid, he couldn't decide. Doubt crept in. He frowned; he never recalled doubting himself before.

"To whom did you report this plan?" He looked back to her, adjusted how his legs fit against the corner counter. One heel thumped restlessly against the hollow of a cabinet door. His jaw tightened momentarily as he wagered taking Hopeite's bait. He disliked her smugness. He roiled under her arrogance. When had he lost such a grip on himself?

"And why do it?"

Abbot unconsciously timed the sound of her knife on the board to be just half a beat off of the steady tapping of Faustite’s boot against her cabinets. Taptap… taptap… taptap... She broke the dissonant rhythm only periodically to dump hunks of leaves and vegetables into the large bowl that she drew down from the cabinets above her. She reached up onto her toes and even then only barely curling her fingers around its lip. She raised her eyebrows at the question.

“Report?” Irritation laid plain in her voice. “Ah. See this is what I mean when I say that we are oddly orderly for those who call themselves ‘chaos’. Reporting to this and that, following rules -- so many rules.” The salad grew and grew to an absurd size. By the time Abbot finally placed the bowl on the island counter it seemed large enough to provide for four healthy eaters. The oven screamed it’s arrival at the programmed temperature and Abbot slide the parchment paper packet directly only the grates.

“Isn’t that… I don’t know… the antithesis of chaos,” she continued, evading the question for one last second before finally answering, “but to respond to your question, I’ve not reported this plan to anyone. I didn’t see a reason to.” She glanced at the smoke detector in the corner of the room, realizing for the first time how hazy the room had gotten. She had, she surmised, about five more minutes if she didn’t open a window, turn on the hood fan, or stand with a magazine under the detector. But all of those options felt somehow like cheating. She coughed demurely into her fist, pressing her free hand over her chest as she did so.

“Oh excuse me. Now, on to your second question. The simple answer is because I can.” Her voice strained as she reached above her fridge to retrieve a rice cooker, but found that even on her toes she could not touch it.

“Oh… blast. Captain, be a lamb and fetch that for me, will you? Where was I?” She rummaged around her cabinets for a moment, pulling down the rice.

“Ah yes. Because I can. Think about it… I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name?”

Of course there are rules. Bureaucracy throttles. And they need to slow down the last seconds of this war into the last minutes, the last hours, the last months, the last years… They'll stretch it out to the ends of the stars in the sky until they find a newer, better threat. Until they find an enemy that isn't themselves. You're moving too quickly, Hopeite, and it isn't for your own edification in the eyes of our superiors.

"You're stalling." His response came succinctly. Dallying over the meaning of chaos and its application to the Negaverse meant little in the context of their conversation. Whether the Negaverse adhered to chaos as an innate disorder of the universe or as the primordial substance existing before the universe never once concerned him. He doubted that this point ever crossed the minds of other officers to any meaningful degree beyond its intrinsic incongruity.

He listened further as she condemned herself to circumventing the bureaucracy. She considered himself above it, as they all were. He smirked in the irony.

So you admit that you have no reason for any of this -- the disobedience, the assault, the befriending of a White Moon senshi. Interesting. Why condemn yourself in the eyes of an organization that commands most of the earth unless you know you're about to slip out of its grasp? Human pettiness knows no limit.

I can't count myself above it.

"I'm not a lamb, Abbott. Buy a step stool." Faustite parted from the counter and approached the stove. He toyed with the placement of the spoon holder between the burners, curious of its melted beer bottle shape.

"I didn't give you my name. I don't intend to. Be wise, Abbott Niles. Everything you do looks turncoat when it's missing justification. Acting under the banner of 'true chaos' promises incompetence. Unruliness. Misdirected arrogance. All eyes are on you, now." He turned, and again leaned against the oven where the fish sat in its baking dish. "What will you do?"

The lack of manners cut through Abbot like a knife and she slammed the measuring cup in her hand down in a minor tantrum. She cranked her neck around over her shoulder, losing her calm demeanor for just a moment and revealed the thing that Chaos had made her for an instant. Hunched over the counter with her eyes wide, her brow furrowed into a heavy ledge over her expression, and her lips drawn into a severe frown she looked almost...

Feral.

“You come into my home,” she hissed, her voice clipped with her temper, “you frighten my animal. You root around in my things. And you won’t even do me this simple favor.” She may have been muttering to herself for the way she seemed to be speaking to the counter. “And beyond all of those social indecencies you accuse me of betraying the one thing that has given me meaning in this life while trying to smoke me out of my own home you abominant, miscreant b*****d.” Her final word was punctuated by the loud slamming of a pot onto the heating coils of her stove. Abbot froze in that moment, working, it seemed, to keep herself in line.

And then the searing tantrum was gone. Abbot huffed almost petulantly and fixed her hair as she gathered herself and her temper.

“Fine. I’ll make the rice on the stove.” Again, Abbot busied herself in the trappings of domesticity to calm her sparking nerves for a long moment.

“There are no eyes on me, Captain,” she finally responded, voice still dripping with the dregs of her fit. “That’s why I can do what I do. You’re the only one who took notice and that was because of a fluke visit from my pet. So the ball is in your court, as much as you want to foist it off on me. What will you do with your supposed knowledge of me.” And then it struck her. Like a bolt of lighting that forced her spine rod-straight. He wasn’t here to gather information on what she was doing, what he? And he wasn’t here to intimidate her into talking about it either. He was here to… warn her? No, that wasn’t quite right. Abbot searched her mind for the right words but found none.

“What have you already done, Captain,” she asked, her voice suddenly very small.

Outbreaks startled him less and less and less. Here he faced a single girl, whose power amplified to less than his, who armed herself only in sound and fury. Here he endured the outburst with the slightest flinch, a twitch of the face and a shift of shoulders when the pot came down on the stove. She yelled and screeched and sounded her wrongs, one after the other. She named all the ways he crossed her but for one -- the raw, bleeding nerve he struck square.

He waited through the lot of it until she collected herself. Until she resigned herself to housework once again.

They each stood in a heavy silence -- her with choice of tasks to busy herself, and him with little more than perpetual snooping through her kitschy display items. They ranged from impossibly cutesy to hyper real, but none sated his perpetual need for stimulation. So he, once again, paced while she worked. He paced to the sound of rice falling like a handful of teeth. Familiar sounds, the lot of it, very nearly music to his ears. But domesticity proved a dreadful shanty, a siren's call, for someone so far removed from the life in which he was raised. That, perhaps, was her weapon. Thoughtful or thoughtless, he couldn't tell. She weaponized his homesickness nonetheless.

He continued his pace in silence not because he ignored her, but for the future considerations she brought to bear. Knowing what he told her, she would do nothing for it -- the next steps of action again fell on him. But how would Faustite address a lieutenant who took so little interest in her own --

There it is.

At last she grasped his statement. Faustite halted his pace. Hands stayed behind his back, knuckle-locked tight against the curve of his spine. "I did what I'm required to do, Abbott. I filed a report. I volunteered myself for follow-up. Your insubordination reaches astoundingly far, and you lack the length of dutiful service to buy you leeway. All I'm doing is feeding you the rope. Either you'll hang yourself or find a way up."

Abbot went uncannily still. If not for the precedent of covering her own ineptitude with a wave of domestic activity, it might have seemed like she hadn’t even responded to Faustite’s statement. The only betrayal, of Faustite was astute, was a delicate shiver that shimmered over Abbot’s body at the force of the tension that coiled tightly in her muscles as realization dawned on her like a winter morning. She stood in stony silence for a long moment, staring at the tile on her backsplash until the white subway tile blurred and became an endless sea of white that threatened to drown her in it’s starkness. Her eyes darted away from the blinding colorlessness and found little solace in the stoneware mixed bowls nested beside the fridge nor the copper whisks resting in the gaudy, terracotta flowerpot.

“You submitted a knowledge report,” she muttered finally, switching the stove top off as she slowly began to understand exactly what was happening. More domestic duties to mask her uncertainty which was now growing gradually more apparent. The shivers that snaked over her body and might have been missed began tremors that shook her bodily. Her missed the button on the oven to turn the heat off. She knocked over the bag of rice but made no motion to clean up her mess. She was going to be found out. She was going to be reined in. She was going to be… tamed. Chaos in her blood revolted against the thought, souring in her veins and turning her stomach.

“Well. That is… unfortunate, Captain.”

Her thoughts were interrupted by the shrieking of the smoke alarms and the accompanying harmony of Amanda barking at the offending sound. She turned then, at long last, and shimmered only slightly before the mirage of her power slid over her visage to create a new being. Hopeite stood in silence, cigarette between her lips in thought before she finally said, “Perhaps you would do me the honor of accompanying me on a walk, Captain.”

She did not wait for an answer before stalking away from the intruder.